I got this question the other day how did Douglas control the
Ghost Riders? And then how did he lose control of the ghost riders?
It's another one of those things that was kind of obvious to me, but I'm soaking
in Teen Wolf all the time and everything is kind of obvious to me, so no judgment here.
Theo: The Ghost Rider's whip didn't go deep enough to take him, but left a gash on his back.
When the dreads put him in their juice tube back
in World War II Douglas had a wound from a Ghost Rider whip.
As we saw with Argent, the wound of a Ghost Rider weapon, if it doesn't
transport you through the dimensional barrier immediately, will continue to try.
It does this by pumping out dimensional energy until you heal it or it kills you.
In Douglas' case, whatever the dreads did to him stabilized that wound, so
it was pumping out dimensional energy into that tube constantly
for decades and eventually his body just became imbued with that energy.
That's why Douglas was already part Ghost Rider when he escaped the Dread doctors tube.
I did a whole thing about his psychology and how he wasn't able to tap the Ghost Rider parts of
himself until after he did the symbolic eating of the souls that's what he thought he was getting
from all of those brain snacks.
Melissa: Something is biting open heads to what? Steal souls? Chris: Looks that way.
The real question is why?
Why was Mr. Douglas brain hungry on Teen Wolf season 6?
As with many things on the show, the Nazi Löwenmensch
eating the gummy candy center of human brains was never explained outright.
There are context clues if you watch closely and have
a basic understanding of 17th century philosophy.
You don't have a basic... okay.
You could also do what I do when I can't figure something out.
Just call Jeff Davis and ask him.
Paul Rea: The the pineal glands, why?
Jeff Davis: Seat of the soul. He believed that, in order to be on
the same level as the Ghost Riders, he needed to collect the power of the soul.
Paul Rea: Ah. I love that.
Douglas was apparently an adherent of Renee Descartes.
The French philosopher regarded the pineal gland as the principal seat of the soul.
It was central to his belief that the human body and human soul are separate.
He believed that all our senses feed information through the eyes, ears, skin, whatever,
into the pineal gland where the information is processed and then considered by the soul.
Melissa: Why kill for it?
Chris: The pineal gland is believed to be the seat
of the soul, the conduit to express our souls through physical actions.
Rene was wrong about that of course,
our little brain pine cone actually just pumps out melatonin when it's time to sleep.
Don't get me wrong, that whole process is incredibly important to humans' overall health,
so the pineal is essential to our species survival.
But according to modern science, Descartes was wrong about its metaphysical properties.
That's actually a fun rabbit hole to visit if you have a
few hours or days to read some of Descartes stuff.
I recommend you start with the one about the Passions.
Anyway.
Douglas apparently believed that Descartes was onto something so
he ran around eating pineal glands like canape.
And as Jeff said - he wanted to control the riders - so he wanted to be like the riders.
The riders' primary function is to take souls.
Douglas imitated that by taking human pineal glands and the soul inside it.
A lot of people think Douglas got something from eating this ghost rider's pineal gland.
I don't think so.
Or if he got any benefit at all it was psychosomatic.
His ghost rider abilities were limited.
He could not open a portal but he could command the hellhound to do it.
The riders did seem to recognize him and he could use their weapons.
But that was about it.
And if you think about it, all of that comes back to Douglas soaking
for 70 years in the dimensional energy that was leaking from his own wound.
Theo: He was thrown in the tank and the wound infected the water
and mixed with the fluid from the vat and actually made him stronger.
Soaking it in, swimming in power for 70 years.
While eating that little piece of brain from the ghost rider might have triggered something,
the ghost rider abilities were in him the whole time.
Quick side track here. There's this
amazing butterfly species in England called the Large Blue.
When they're caterpillars, they create chemicals so they smell
like ant larvae. The ants will then pick them up and take them home.
The ants will feed the caterpillars and basically ignore them while the
caterpillars eat up all the real ant larvae they can find inside the hive.
Douglas was like that with the ghost riders. Once he tapped into his existing Ghost Rider energy,
he could do a lot of what they could do. But mainly Parrish and the Riders
accepted him as one of them because he smelled like their dimensional energy.
The Ghost Riders are a lot like that ant hive - they
just do what they do and most of the time they're operating on automatic.
They travel the world. They collect souls. That's it. Take a soul,
turn it into a ghost rider, rinse and repeat.
Every once in a while doing that job requires a form of
consciousness and individuality on their part.
Every now and then, one of the riders will break
off and take on another job like the one that became the sheriff's wife.
But while it was projecting itself from the memories of the people around it,
deep down it's just another ant doing what it does to keep the hive going.
Mostly though the riders, they just ride.
They take souls The hellhounds help out and make sure nothing escapes the hunt again.
The hellhounds have autonomy when they're not
actually needed as part of the hunt or when they're out on assignment.
But when necessary, their free will is subsumed by the Hunt's priorities.
It is into this hive of almost-automatons that
we now inject the strong will of the arrogant Mr. Douglas.
He is one of them, so if he's pushing the riders or hellhounds in one direction,
it must be the right direction for them to go.
Douglas' big mistake was merging the dimensions by plugging Corey into the machinery of the hunt.
This not only intersected the worlds, which caused confusion and disruption for the
usually orderly hunt, it also injected another consciousness into the mix.
A consciousness that was at odds with Douglas.
Corey: Attention all passengers, the train will be arriving in eight minutes.
I contend it was Corey who got the hunt unstuck.
It was only after he was plugged in that
the countdown began and the train started running again.
While the hunt was moving on, Douglas was demanding that the Riders stay with him.
This conflicts with their primary purpose and then
resulted in a direct order from above to get their asses moving.
Who gave this order? I don't know? Think of it as the basic consciousness that controls the hunt.
Call it the great god Odin. However you want to perceive the individual who is at the top
of this particular cosmic structure, whoever that is, said "let's go!" and the riders obeyed.
But what should just be another drone in this ant colony is now acting all shouty and belligerent.
Douglas: (speaking German)
Come back and kill them! (speaking German)
So the Riders, they removed his outer shell of individuality.
Basically, they did to him what they do to all the souls they take.
They turned Douglas into a full Ghost Rider.